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Friday, December 18, 2015

Pat Buchanan: America First — or World War III

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.”

So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had
just responded to a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer as to whether he
would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria.

“Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it,” blurted
Christie: “I would talk to Vladimir Putin … I’d say to him, ‘Listen, Mr.
President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to
you.’

“Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact
they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same
feckless weakling … we have in the Oval Office … right now.”

Ex-Gov. George Pataki and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum would also impose a
no-fly zone and shoot down Russian planes that violated it. Said Gov.
John Kasich, “It’s time we punched the Russians in the nose.”

Carly Fiorina would impose a no-fly zone and not even talk to Putin
until we’ve conducted “military exercises in the Baltic States” on
Russia’s border. Jeb Bush, too, would impose a no-fly zone.

These warhawks apparently assume that President Putin is a coward
who, if you shoot down his warplanes, will back away from a fight.

Are we sure? After the Turks shot down that Sukhoi SU-24, Moscow sent
fighter planes to Syria to escort its bombers and has reportedly
deployed its lethal S-300 antiaircraft system there.

A U.S. Marine Corps aviator describes the S-300: “A complete game
changer for all fourth-gen aircraft [like the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18].
That thing is a beast and you don’t want to get near it.” There are
press reports that an angry Putin has ordered the even more advanced
S-400 system moved into Syria.

Is Putin bluffing? Are we prepared to ride the up-escalator, at the
top of which is nuclear war, if Putin, who has been boasting of his
modernized nuclear forces, is also willing to ride it rather than back
down?

Uber-hawk Lindsey Graham wants to send tens of thousands of American
troops to fight ISIS, and refuses to work with Iran, Russia, or Syria’s
Bashar Assad to crush our common enemy ISIS.

Graham prefers “allies,” like the Saudis and Gulf Arabs.

But both have bailed out of the air war on ISIS, and sent troops and
bombers instead to attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Result: The
Houthis have been in retreat and al-Qaida and ISIS are moving into the
vacated territory.

Another Mideast base camp for terrorists is being created — by us.

“I miss George W. Bush!” wailed Graham in the undercard debate.

How many other Americans are, like Graham, pining for the return of a Bush foreign policy that gave us Barack Obama?

Yet, now, a rival school is taking center stage in the Republican
presidential campaign, rejecting the knee-jerk hostility to working with
Putin. Not only does Rand Paul belong to this school, so, apparently,
do Donald Trump and his strongest challenger, Sen. Ted Cruz.

Cruz had previously disparaged the legacy of the “neocons” who
prodded Bush into war in Iraq and championed a democracy crusade in the
Middle East. In Las Vegas, he spoke of a new national-interest-based
foreign policy, a policy that puts “America First.”

“If we topple Assad … ISIS will take over Syria, and it will worsen
national security interests. And the approach — instead of being … a
democracy promoter, we ought to hunt down our enemies and kill ISIS
rather than creating opportunities for ISIS to control new countries.”

Cruz rejects the Manichaean worldview of the neocons and their
reflexive hostility to Russia, and appears willing to work with a
Russian autocrat to crush a monstrous evil like ISIS, as U.S. presidents
did in working with anti-Communist dictators to win the Cold War.

Midway through the debate, Trump cut loose with a sweeping indictment of mindless American interventionism in the Middle East:

“We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that,
frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion
in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other
problems — our airports and all the other problems we have — we would
have been a lot better off. …

“We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East —
we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have
been killed, the people that have been wiped away — and for what? It’s
not like we had victory. It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally
destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion
dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the
United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything
else that are all falling apart!”

If we do not want Syria in 2016 to become what Sarajevo became in
1914, the powder keg that explodes into a world war, the War Party
Republicans, who have learned nothing from the past, should be relegated
to the past.

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